Don't Look Back in Anger
by jandl
Summary: Fifty years after Jack ran away from his problems, he returns to see an old friend. The question is, after fifty years, will she have anything nice to say to him? Set post Children of Earth, and spoilers abound. Characters: Gwen and Jack.


**Disclaimer:** Torchwood and all its characters belong to Russell T. Davies and the Beeb. The lyrics that helped me think up this song belong to Oasis (may they rest in peace. *sob*). I own nothing but the lame story.

**A/N**: My first attempt at a Torchwood story (though by no means my first story in general). So, hopefully, everyone is in character (I'm a HUGE stickler for characterization). I have no beta so any and all mistakes are mine. This was written for my good friend doctors_gal_1792 (jack_is_love17 on Livejournal) as a gift. Please let me know what you think. Praise and criticism are equally appreciated. Enjoy!

**DON'T LOOK BACK IN ANGER**

Inspired by these lines from Oasis: _And so Sally can wait; she knows it's too late as we're walking on by. My soul slides away, but don't look back in anger, I heard you say…at least not today._

There were times when Gwen Cooper Williams thought she would have been better off never having heard the name Captain Jack Harkness. On her semi-bad days, she often wished that he would come back so she could spit on him or shoot him a few times, if her hands would cooperate long enough to hold the gun without dropping it or misaiming her fire. On her REALLY bad days, she tried to forget him entirely. But, as it usually went in Gwen's life, karma or conscience or fate—whatever one chose to call it—would not allow her to forget. Jack had, at one time, been a large object in her life—the biggest—and therefore, he cast the largest shadow. And Gwen never felt very comfortable with shadows, not since Susie and Owen's comments about the shadows in the darkness of death.

Gwen had spent decades putting her love and worry for her best friend behind her so that she could function in her daily life. The only things that kept her from Retconning the whole Torchwood experience from her mind were the needs to have someone remember her fallen Torchwood comrades and also because she feared that when Jack DID return, he would need her help. And she ached at the thought of his expression should he arrive at Torchwood home base to discover not one familiar friendly face.

Granted, Gwen had left Torchwood some time ago. She had stayed through the baby and his childhood, and had even forced herself to continue working in the days after the death of Martha and Rhys. (They had been killed in an invasion of spirit like creatures near the remains of what was once Roald Dahl Plass. They had called themselves the Gelth and had singled out Gwen for malicious reasons unbeknownst to her. Martha and Rhys had been helping her fight, and the fight had been quite a doozy and had ended in mass explosions. She remembered thinking to herself that maybe the Plass would be better off having nothing built on it because it always seemed to explode or implode, and really the government should learn eventually. She had crawled away from the ensuing wreckage after the battle, broken but alive. The others had not.) No, what had finally slowed Gwen down was old age and sickness. She had been forced to put aside her gizmos and technology and leave the world saving to aliens like the Doctor (who had showed up a few times over the years) and to humans like Luke Smith and her own son, Ianto. Her son, just like his namesake, had a strong propensity for sarcasm and secrets, but an equally strong talent for saving the world. Gwen felt quite proud of her contribution to the world and in these days spoken of, she merely quietly contemplated when she was to leave it and face the dark shadows in the blackness that her friends had already faced.

Yes, Gwen Cooper Williams had lived a good life and despite her fear of the shadow in the dark, she was prepared to face it (mostly). She could feel it coming; the shadow was closing in, and every second of time passing was a second she could feel ticking away. She felt an eternal charge in the air, like she had used to feel before the world would end and inevitably restart again. She wondered if Jack would be willing to come back to Earth and restart it once he no longer had to face the danger of seeing her. The time had long since passed of her waiting for him. In the first ten or twenty years after he had left, zapping himself into the sky with a flash of light in order to leave his personal demons in the dust of Earth, she had waited. Not a day would pass that she would not hope to see a flash of long WWII army coat or hear a sassy pick-up line in her ear. But the years had passed, and the world had ended and restarted, and she had gotten older and he had never come. He had run away from his personal, **metaphorical** demons, and she had been left to face the earth shattering, invading, physical ones on her own.

There was one particular instance when she had been 35 and her son was still young. She had left the boy at home with Rhys and she had run out to handle what was supposed to be a quick, non-threatening mission. It had ended with most of her team dead and her with a bullet wound in her chest and her stomach. She had lain for hours by herself on a darkened pier, surrounded by her dead friends and numerous dead weevils and aliens that were less than nice to look at. As her vision had dimmed and she had accepted that she was going to die on that darkened, abandoned pier, she had found herself hoping that Jack would arrive. She did not want him to see her die of course, but she wanted his presence—the comforting feel of her immortal best friend who had died so many times on his own—to help her face the coming darkness. Then the darkness had set in, and she was still alone, and she would die and he would live forever, and she found herself hating him a bit for that.

By the time she reached 75, she had realized that he was never coming back. The Doctor had shown up a handful of times to help save the world, and she always asked if he had seen Jack. The last time she had asked, he finally admitted that yes, he had. This incarnation of the Doctor, who wore glasses and a professor like outfit with slightly emo-band styled hair, looked rather sad as he told her of their experiences traveling together again. It seemed that Jack was still scouring the universe; "dancing across the stars," the Doctor phrased it. Gwen was pretty sure she knew what the Doctor meant by dancing, and it had nothing to do with feet, at least not in the **usual** sense. But, that conversation had been nearly 35 years ago, and Jack had still never returned. Or, if he had, he was staying well beneath the radar.

Gwen was 80 now, and she was tired and old and she was sure that the world was more than tired of her. It was as she was taking the tea off the stove, the whistle still blowing, that she heard the knock on the door. It was loud, authoritative. It was the sound the door made when her son or Martha's son Jack knocked on it.

"Come in," she called, looking forward to a nice sit down tea with her son and his husband. Or either one if they happened to be by themselves. She winced as her voice rang out. It no longer had the sweet, innocent Welsh tones that caressed "o" vowels. It was now rough, like sandpaper. It was the sound of too much shouting, screaming, and hard use, mixing with feebleness and tiredness.

She arranged the 3 cups of tea (in case it was both men), previously warmed in the microwave for 30 seconds exactly, and carried them into the living room. When she entered the room and looked up, one mug promptly crashed to the floor. Standing there, in the door to her flat, was bloody Jack Harkness. She looked down at the broken mug on the floor (her son's favourite), to the teapot with PG Tips teabags soaking in it, to Jack Harkness. Her first instinct was to lean down and pick up the broken mug (years of cleaning up after Rhys and her son), and yell quite irrationally, "Look what you made me do!" Her second instinct was to pick up the teapot and throw it at his head. The only thing keeping her from doing that was her weakened arms. The most throwing it would accomplish would be to prove to Jack just how much weaker she had become in the intervening decades. She decided to go with her third impulse, and that was simply to walk around the broken mug, lay the other two on the table, and sit down in a chair.

After she sat, staring at the two unbroken mugs for countless moments, she finally looked up. "Well, are you going to sit down or stand in my doorway all afternoon?" she asked, trying not to let her voice shake. Jack moved towards the living room, closing the door behind him and remaining silent. "Grab the teapot for me, would you?" she requested, her eyes refocusing on the wall in front of her.

Gwen was floored. The man she had waited to see for years was finally in front of her, and now she could think of nothing to say or do. She could barely see him for her eyes were not what they used to be, but what little she could see was enough to trouble her. He was still beautiful—cleft chin, startling blue eyes, dimples in the cheek, and perfectly parted hair—but that age-old sadness she remembered seemed to have only grown with time. She realized then that he had never listened to her up on that hill all those years ago. She had told him it was not his fault and that he could not run away from his problems, and he had not listened to her on either account. Once upon a time, she would have sat with him and held him and potentially hit him to get her point across. Now she could none of those things. She was too old, too tired, and too angry with him, although she had never felt angry until she had seen his shape on her doorstep.

He finally sat down across from her at the table, the pot set between them.

"Hello, Gwen Cooper," he finally said, a smile in his voice and across his face (though she could read his face and knew it was a fake smile). He spoke to her as though he had seen her yesterday, as though she hadn't aged fifty years since they last spoke. If Gwen had been twenty years younger, she would have slapped the smile off his face, fake or no.

"I'm about to die, aren't I, Jack?" she asked, suddenly unwilling to speak with him on unimportant subjects and throw around niceties. He had waited fifty years to check up on her, and when someone waits that long, there is always an underlying reason for finally dropping in, and that reason is never to simply say "hello."

"What makes you think that?" he bounced back, looking down at the table and putting sugar cubes in his teacup to avoid looking her in the eyes.

"Fifty years, Jack. And not **one** word. I may be old and not as quick as I once was, but I am certainly not dimwitted or off my head. And when someone like you, who is immortal and **still** has no time for those who love him, suddenly drops in after fifty years of silence, well…it does not take a genius to figure it out. You've come to say goodbye, and not hello, haven't you?"

Jack was silent a moment, pouring the tea into both his cup and hers. He set the pot down and stared silently into his cup for a few heartbeats. When he looked up, he said nothing; he merely studied her.

"You look beautiful, Gwen."

She scoffed. "I look old. Though when one is over eighty, one can only expect so much."

"I'm surprised you're in this flat. I thought you had bought a house."

"We did. Raised our son there and everything. I even kept it after…Rhys died about 35 years ago. But, then I got older and about 15 years ago I decided to move back here where Rhys and I started. It's smaller and feels more like home now than the house did. It was too big for just me."

"What about your baby? What was that like? He must be…50 now?"

"Look at you, Jack. Trying to change the topic on an old woman. Yes, he's 50 now, and he runs Torchwood. Chip off the old block really. His name is Ianto. His husband's name is Jack. That was Martha and Tom's boy. It seems like destiny for Jacks and Iantos to be together."

She looked at Jack after she said this, and the pain she had seen in the MI5 building right after Ianto's death was still there. At least Jack hadn't forgotten **him** even if he had forgotten her. She drew some comfort from that.

"So, why are you really here, Jack Harkness? It's more than just my old age, isn't it? Something is about to happen."

She finished off the final dregs of her tea and poured herself another cup, cursing her hands as they shook slightly. The last thing she wanted Jack to see was just how much arthritis and rheumatism was eating away at her muscles. As much as she hated to admit it, she still could not stand to cause him pain, even if she was angry as all hell at him.

"The world is about to end, Gwen. And the Doctor and I…we really have no idea how to stop it. Your son Ianto and Martha's son Jack…they're going to be on the front lines. We're going to fight with everything we have and everything that Torchwood has, but people like you—"

"You mean the old and decrepid."

"—might not survive. The first stage of it all has begun. Look out the window. The sky is falling in brimstone and meteorites. And tomorrow the invasion begins. I'm sorry, Gwen, but no one will be around to protect you."

Gwen looked out the window and watched as the fires rained down from the red sky. It did indeed look like the world was about to end, and Gwen had no doubts that she was going to end with it. She was nowhere near as spry as she used to be, despite the fact that she was still stubborn as hell. If anything invaded her flat, she was a gonner. No one would save her, that's what Jack had said. She felt a bit of that angry fire she had been sporting a few moments before spring back to the surface.

"There's been no one around to protect me for quite some time. Or have you forgotten that?"

"Gwen, I—"

"No, you will let me talk, Jack Harkness. I have waited fifty years to speak with you and you will not shut me up now. For almost fourty years after you left, I had to protect this city—sometimes this world—on my own. Sometimes, I would wait until the last minute to make a final judgement call, until seconds before the invasion, because I hoped that you would come to help. But you never did. I almost died so many times, and you never came. And nobody else came either. I was more than convinced that I would never see you again in my life, and I had even come to accept that fact. But I did my duty, and I saved the world, and I sacrificed EVERYTHING—the same as you did—with one difference. I was willing to help you and you ran away. Where were you ever to help me? So, you show up here, when I am more than aware that even if aliens did not invade tomorrow, that my days are numbered—to tell me, what? That no one will protect me and I **might **die? There's no might. As you and the Doctor used to say, 'Everything has its time and everything dies.' Well, my day is coming, Jack. I knew that already, and I'm more than certain you knew I know that. So, why are you **really** here? And don't tell me it's just to say hello."

Jack was silent for a few moments, looking down at her hands on the table where she had placed them in anger a few moments before on either side of the teapot, palms down. He picked up one withered, brown-spotted, wrinkled hand and studied it. He drew his finger along the back before turning it over and tracing his finger along her life line and the pads of her fingers. Gwen found herself holding her breath and knew that once upon a time she would have been swooning. But that Gwen Cooper was long since dead and buried, and the one left in her place simply sat there, waiting for her best friend to answer, and prayed he wouldn't lie to her, for once in his life.

"I came because I needed to see you. I wanted to show you that I hadn't forgotten you, and because one constant when the world was ending was the face of Gwen Cooper. It didn't seem right to face the end without having you next to me." He continued to hold her hand, and Gwen told herself that she did not shiver when he placed a kiss to the back of her hand. He looked up to her and held her gaze, his blue eyes piercing hers and for a moment Gwen allowed herself to think that she was fifty years younger again. She allowed herself to feel breathless and alive and excited, and felt the skin on her hand hum with the attention his lips had given it. Then she breathed in again, and the sharp pain in her lungs and the resounding cough reminded her of the reality.

"That charm is not going to work on me any longer, Jack Harkness," she scolded, though her voice lacked the venom it had on the beginning of their meeting.

"Give me time. I'll wear you down," he replied, winking at her. And suddenly, he was the Jack she remembered. The pain was still present, but it was taking a backseat to the glow in his eyes that he had when a challenge presented itself that he did not mind trying to beat. Gwen wondered briefly how he could **want** to flirt with a woman about to step into the grave, but then reminded herself that he was Jack Harkness and in reality he was much older than her eighty years.

She started to wonder exactly how much time had passed for him. Was he even on the same time stream she was on? It could have been only a year or two for him (she tried not to be indignant at the thought) or it may have been two hundred or so. So, she asked him, not that she expected a straight answer.

"It's been long enough," was all he said on the subject, and she could tell from the sound of his voice that he would get no more specific than that.

The fire from outside began to have a smell to it, and Gwen could tell that fires were beginning to start around the city. She could hear the sirens of the fire brigade and the ambulances from the other side of the city. And the smell of sulfur was beginning to be thick in the air. It wouldn't belong before they began to hit her side of the town and Jack would have to go fight alongside her son. She refused to wonder if her son or his husband was even still alive. She would not think of it.

"Did it ever work, Jack?" she finally asked. His eyes flicked to hers in question over the rim of their cups.

"Did what work?"

"Did you ever find closure in the stars? Did you ever shake the dust of Cardiff and Earth off your feet?"

"No. It's why I'm still running."

"You're never going to stop now, are you?"

"There were five people on this planet I cared about. When you're gone, there will be none left. What's there to fight for then?"

"What about the innocent people out there, Jack? They're the ones you recruited me to fight for, do you remember? When you saved the world, it wasn't just for me or Owen or Tosh or Ianto. It was for your daughter," (Jack looked away from her at this point to a point just over her shoulder), "for the Doctor when he couldn't be here. Jack, there are so few of us left now. Sarah-Jane is gone. Martha is gone. UNIT is disbanded. Torchwood's forces are falling apart more and more every year. And we both know what's going to happen to me. Who will protect the Earth then?"

"Maybe they should learn to finally grow up and look after themselves," Jack snapped, standing quickly and stalking towards the window to watch the sky fall.

Gwen rose much more slowly and walked over to where Jack was standing. She looked over the city with him and placed her hand on the small of his back, the only show of comfort she felt she could give him. She hated hurting him (even if the still angry part of her rejoiced in it slightly), but she knew he needed to understand. He had been running for fifty years, and she had held the world up in his absence. But she was weakening and it was time for Atlas to hold the world again for she knew he could do a much better job of it than she could.

"Once, before you left, I figured out the answer to that question I always asked you about the Doctor. Do you remember?"

"You asked me why sometimes in world's history, when things were awful, he never showed up," he answered, still faced towards the window. She lowered her hand from his back, and she felt him respond by reaching over and grabbing her hand, his fingers gently caressing the fingers that still held the engagement and wedding rings that Rhys had given her. Gwen took a moment to enjoy the familiar feel of his young hands caressing her older ones. She had allowed herself to forget how right it felt to have him touch her, but she wouldn't allow herself to forget again. Not in these last few moments.

"Yes. When I was trying to protect all those children on the estate, I felt I had reached a conclusion. The Doctor probably just turned his head in shame at the things humans do to each other. Jack, if you don't stand up for these people—if you leave them to fight for themselves—they'll just kill each other. And everything Tosh and Owen and Ianto and Rhys and Martha—everything they fought for—will be for nothing. People do these horrible things to each other, and they've never learned to stop because no one has been good enough to try and change us. The Doctor won't be around forever and he doesn't have the time to try and make us see the right, and he wouldn't take the time to teach us even if he did have it. But, you do. You have so much time, Jack, and so much knowledge to give."

"Why should I do it, Gwen? Every time I do the right thing, people tell me it's wrong. Or I hurt those nearest and dear to me. I killed my grandson to save the world, and not a day goes by that I don't feel I made the **wrong** choice because my daughter would never look me in the eye again."

"You never gave her a chance to, Jack. Granted, you're probably right on that final count. But I know you, Jack. You would have been just as hurt to have a total stranger look at you in anger for having to kill their child."

"I still don't see why I should bother. I can do so much out there in the universe with the Doctor."

"Yes, I'm sure traveling around with the moody alien in a small blue box is going to do wonders for both of your temperaments, Jack bloody Harkness," Gwen snapped, feeling some of the bite of her Torchwood personality shift back into her. She marveled at herself for the briefest of seconds. She hadn't said anything like that in a long time.

"You know, I really did miss you, Gwen Cooper," Jack said, turning around to face her and grab her other hand. He smiled down at her, both hands embracing the opposite pair. He stared at her a few seconds before letting go of her right hand. He raised his left hand to trace her white hair, still as long as it had been when she was young. He finally leaned in and, much as he had done after the first time he had disappeared on her, kissed her on the cheek, lingering just a second longer than was truly appropriate.

As he went to back away, Gwen reached out with both arms and embraced him fully. Yes, she was angry, and she realized he had not promised to look after the world when she was gone. But, she knew he had heard her. And if she knew anything about Jack Harkness it was that he would do the right thing, even if the emotional pain manifested itself in a physical means. He would stay on Earth when it was all done, even if it was agony for him to do so, even if for no other reason than he saw it as a punishment to himself. For that, she hugged him with all the strength her tired eighty year old body could muster. She only prayed that she wouldn't snap in two when his stronger, muscular arms squeezed especially tight around her midsection.

The hug ended, as all good things do, and Gwen allowed herself to look him over one last time. "I'm so glad I got to see you again, Jack. It comforts me to know that you'll be here to restart the world when it ends. And I'm glad you finally came for me, even if you did make me wait fifty years."

"I'm sorry I made you wait. I'm sorry I left you to fight alone. But I knew the world had no better hands to be in than those of Gwen Cooper."

"It's Gwen Cooper Williams actually. You were always forgetting that last part."

Jack let out a chuckle and began to walk towards the door. He stood there briefly, knowing this would be the last time he would see Gwen's face alive and vibrant. She stared back at him, her eyes telling him that she still had yet one more thing to say.

"I loved you, Jack Harkness," she finally answered, a tear—the first in their conversation—making its way down her cheek. "It's why I waited for so long. I just thought you deserved to know it."

She stared at Jack as he stood there, one hand on the doorknob and one foot out of the door, the world coming to chaos behind him in shots of red and gold. His silhouette was still and she couldn't see his expression. She wondered if he would say he had loved her too, or if he would tell her not to (though he was fifty years too late for that). He said neither. Instead, he simply said, "I know. I'll never forget you, Gwen Cooper Williams." He gave her one last, small smile—the one that showed the dimple in his right cheek—and walked out of the door. Gwen knew she would never see him again.

She sat down on the couch, all her energy gone, and on reflex poured herself another cup of tea. She wasn't sure if she was really processing everything that had happened in the past half hour. Had she really just seen her best friend for the first time in fifty years, when she's standing on death's doorstep? The tingling on the back of her hand from his kiss and her still rapidly beating weak heart, thumping madly from his hug, told her yes. She was dying, and he had actually come to say goodbye. She had finally told him what she had longed to say for all those years, despite his known relationship with Ianto that she could not begrudge him for having. She had not received an "I love you" in return, but she had enough wisdom at her age to realize that it didn't matter. Jack was never one for using those words, but she knew he felt them. After all, when he said he would never forget her, he meant "never," and she knew that her name would be remembered by someone long after the world ended, even if it ended for good within a few hours.

Yes, Gwen Cooper Williams had lived a good life and she had no regrets about it. She didn't even regret waiting fifty years for one conversation. The world was falling apart, but Jack Harkness had come back and she knew without a doubt that if any pieces were left over, he would be the one to put them together. She picked up her mug of tea, and stared at the red sky outside and the smouldering rooftops. The shadows in the dark would be coming for her soon, within a few hours quite possibly, and she was no longer afraid in the least tiny bit. If Death wanted to take her, well…he could bring it on. She was more than ready to fight.


End file.
